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Editor’s Note: Foreigners have various reasons for coming to stay in China. However many may not expect the move to change them so much. In the following article some foreigners discuss how they have changed since coming to live in the Middle Kingdom.

Making China one’s permanent residence is by no means an easy task for foreigners who have wanted to do so. In the United States of America one million green cards are issued per year; in China the annual average is 248. Over time, China has come to be known as one of the hardest countries in the world to get a green card.

However, in recent years, the difficulty of obtaining “one of the hardest green cards to get in the world” has decreased. The Ministry of Public Security granted permanent residence to 1576 foreigners in 2016, 163 percent more than the year before.

Another girl had similar sentiments and summed up a few changes in habit that she picked up in the Middle Kingdom. The first one is being ‘overly polite’. Originally she was always apologizing for bumping into people and other mistakes, saying thank you all the time. She says now, “[She] saves her thank-yous, sorries and excuse-mes for when [she] really means it, not just as a conversation filler.”

She also no longer takes the medicine as much as she used to. If her throat hurts, she drinks ginger-brown sugar tea, body aches, she sleeps on a traditional wooden bed. All of these traditional Chinese remedies are adequate to take care of basic aches and pains.

After living in China for a while, she even learned how important it was to keep healthy. In Australia, she rarely thought about the temperature of her food and drinks. Everyone drinks cold beverages there because of the heat. On the contrary, in China, even in the hotter parts, people drink their beverages and eat their foods warm, believing that cold drinks harm one’s energy

A foreign mother living in China said that once she took her four-month-old baby out for a walk and had someone from the ‘temperatur police’ run up to her and insist she wrapped her child in another layer to keep it warm. Only a few minutes later, another person chased her down with a fan and started trying to cool her baby off.

Not all foreigners are limited to merely criticizing China from an outsider’s perspective. Some with high-level Chinese even frequent Zhihu (China’s answer to Quora) and talk about their experience of China and how they’ve changed since living here.

One Polish exchange student studying in China even took at liking to the selfie culture so popular among Chinese girls.

Each China landlord comes with his/her own set of ups and downs, and experiences of dealing with them will be vastly different. However, there are some standard hard-earned tips on how to negotiate with Chinese landlords.

If you’ve just moved to China or are looking to jump-start your language learning, YCIS Beijing Secondary School Chinese Curriculum Coordinator Jessica Sun have some essential tips that will make sure you’re learning the right way.

comment|73669|93487

This is a piss poor example of journalism, shame on the writer and this website for putting this garbage on the internet. 1576 permanent residents in 1.3 billion people, how generous, and how many years and much language ability to have a Chinese passport, how many, what's that, no response, cat got your tongue, come on speak up, I can't hear you.

comment|73670|53922

So, just to make it quite clear, this article was translated from the Chinese article. It doesn't necessarily reflect the views of eChinacities staff and it was translated into English to provide our readers with a look at how life for foreigners is portrayed in foreign media. If you disagree with the article, if it makes you upset, angry, causes you to experience profound existential melancholy or ecstatic joy, please feel free to to engage with whatever range of emotions that you feel this article triggers. Just do so knowing that the article doesn't reflect our views at all and that we translate them to try to give you a better look at perceptions of foreigners from a Chinese perspective.

comment|73671|109914

comment|73688|242457

I love the crap in these stories, like the girl whose first words are Mandarin when she sees another foreigner-bullshit!- and the person who sets their table Chinese-style at home-bullshit!-why do some foreigners try too hard to change?

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All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate. Please use the Classifieds to advertise your business and unrelated posts made merely to advertise a company or service will be deleted.